There are several related issues. Perhaps the one that you've brought up is more "obvious" than others, but what about someone in a tournament, where after 3 months they just "leave chess.com" and lose on time in all their remaining tournament games. It's not really fair to people who, as you say, "play more quickly", but perhaps this is one of the drawbacks to playing quickly. I think that this is not something which should be managed at the chess.com level, but rather that people who play quickly always assume some risk that other "as slow as legally possible, plus maybe some vacation time" players may end up with some bonus points as a result of their strategy.

There would then need to be a process to appeal, since different TDs would have different criteria. I don't like opening that can of worms. I was even in a tournament where the TD was playing (fine) but cheating (not fine). The idea that TDs all of a sudden have power to remove players, it doesn't sit well.

About the idea of erasing the history of a cheater (or of anybody, really) - it's a complicated issue. You'd have to go back and replay all of the games which have occurred since then (site-wide) if you really wanted to erase. That is just not feasible. What if one of the first 100 games on the site was with the cheater - it could throw off everything, plus anybody's rating would then be "fair game". I mean, you could log in one day, be an 1800, and log in later that day and be a 1750, with a different "best win", etc. So, that idea is out.

Instead, you could just "write over" any wins that the cheater had in the tournament. For example, the cheater had an 1800 rating and beat a 1900 player, and later got caught. The tournament would show that the 1900 player won the game, but any rating points would continue to be lost. This may not be a bad idea - but isn't it then unfair to tournaments that have already finished -- you might have a situation where the removal of a cheater from a tournament changed the final place standings, where someone who had a 3rd place medal all of a sudden has it taken away. I'm not sure I like this idea either, but it's better than the previous one.

Very good point. If a tourney is finished, is it useful to retrocatively change a result?

I cycle ... going back and "testing" for cheaters is a sensitive subject.

I do think "writing over" any results by a cheater in an active tourney is a valid and good idea. *

From a rating point of view in non tourney games .... maybe ignore ... or erase ... as who wouldn't be pleased to receive an email from Eric that their rating or record had just improved due to a cheater being caught (I assume one wouldn't erase games where a cheater loses).

Ozzie, why do you have to write over wins, etc.? Why not just remove the cheater from the crosstable altogether?

As for giving the TD too much power. I would rather have power in the hands of the TD (supposedly al responsible person who is paying attention) than to have power in the hands of a player who decides to walk away from the tournament. Essentially any player who enters a tourney has the ability to compete hard against a few people and then quit chess.com. Seems like we're giving that player a lot of power.

You can have a system where the TD can't just remove players at their discretion. It can be part of the tournament parameters that, say, timing out in 2 games or more is subject to removal. That way all players are in control of whether they get removed.

I suppose I could see a workable solution there, with the >=2 timeouts. What if there is someone who times out in 2 games, and the TD doesn't remove them, and then they come back and play all the rest of their games?

I'd still rather not try and "manage" the problem. To a certain extent, the entire integrity of the tournament system relies on all of the participants "playing to win". To the extent that one of the players no longer is playing to win, that fundamental assumption breaks down, and all sorts of problems begin.

I'm not entirely sure that I disagree with you on your points, Loomis. But I'm a believer in general in distributed power structures functioning within the bounds of certain assumptions and parameters - which in this case would point to a not-very-powerful TD and just "accepting" that some players are going to be a problem, local to their tournament. I feel that empowering TDs (especially when anybody can be one) is not the right solution. I can just see it now - player A, who views player B as a great threat to their placing in the tournament, lobbies heavily to the TD that they kick out player B, because they timed out in exactly two of their games. To me, it's better if those discussions don't happen, because I can see them getting pretty ugly, pretty personal, and pretty public.

Just had one - in the 4th chess.com tourney one guy in our group used up all his vacation time and timed out for all but one of the players, played a few more moves and then timed out with that guy too. This meant that I never had a chance to make a comeback against the guy who beat me earlier in the round. Mind you, if I had beaten him in the first place I would have won the group, meaning that the one who deserved to win won anyway, so the timeout didn't actually make any difference.

Timeouts are annoying, but if you're the best player in the group then you'll win all your matches anyway - I blundered in one of my games and blew my chances - no point in me moaning about something else to make me feel better.

Cheaters are a whole different ball game, but I don't have any first-hand experience of this that I can prove. Some form of medieval torture is probably the best way to go.